Notes on Eva Bartlett

Update Dec. 21, 2016 Britains' Channel 4 has this special page that refutes some of Bartletts's claims

Update Dec. 14, 2016 The famous rumour and myth busting site Snope.com has a material about Bartlett's claim that
revolutionaries are "recycling" bodies when they report on Assad killings.

In Connecticut, listening to Eva Bartlett, a 200% supporter of the Assad government

Dec. 10, 2016 New Haven

Most of Bartlett's claims and excuses I had heard before, but some were breathtaking like the first couple here:

1. She said the fighters in eastern Aleppo were not Syrians. They were all (or almost all) foreign terrorists who had come down from Turkey. And several times it was claimed they were mercenary terrorists, meaning they came down just for the pay.

2. She said "nobody in Aleppo has heard of the White Helmets" "They are not working in east Aleppo" she said, east Aleppo being the area where the White Helmets operate and where they have dug out thousands or tens of
thousands of people after Assad/Russian air attacks. She said the White Helmets exist, but that they're a big
Western propaganda effort. She claimed the White Helmets carry weapons and they're happy to sit and take photos with the terrorists.
How she would know anything about eastern Aleppo is unclear since she said she had never been there. (By the way the White Helmets were recently given the Right Livelihood Award, the Left
Alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize.)

3. Everybody is lying to you and is under the spell of the U.S government. Not only the corporate media, but the major human
rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders. Even the folks who give out the Right
Livelihood Award (and gave it to the White Helmets) were fooled.

The panelists even went to great pains to disparage Democracy Now! which Bartlett said does not allow anyone on who takes an "opposing view from that of the State Department". DN! apparently got their ire because it refused to allow the Peace Council to talk about its trip to Assad controlled Syria on the show.

4. 93% of Aleppo had been liberated from the terrorists so how could 100,000 people still be there. Another time Bartlett said the terrorists were holding the people of eastern Aleppo saying it was the "largest hostage crisis in history". If you can't deny the facts, just minimize the numbers.

And the usual excuses for Assad

5. To her the allegations of attacks on hospitals by the government of Syria were just the "media lying". The attacks by the terrorists on West Aleppo are ignored by the corporate media, Bartlett said.

6. When asked about barrel bombs Bartlett said they were no worse than other way that people get killed in warfare. That they're dropped in civilian areas rather than on fighters didn't get her attention.

7. She had a whole narrative about the people starving under Assad sieges. She talked about Madaya in detail, saying that in Jan. 2016 there was a lot of attention to people starving in that city. She claimed the Red Crescent had delivered food a few months earlier and asked how people could be starving. Later she talked about faked pictures of the skeletal looking victims (It is true that some pictures circulated at the time were false, but few doubt the overall story or that Madaya now is in the worst shape of all besieged areas.)

Her other line of defense was that there was enough food, but the terrorists had stockpiled it for themselves and wouldn't give it to the people. (Compare this to what the U.S. said about starvation in Iraq during the era of Saddam Hussein)

8. The sarin gas attack that killed 1,300? She says Carla Dellaponte said the rebels did it and that Seymour Hersh showed that the sarin came from Turkey and was delivered to the "terrorists". (If I recall Dellaponte was talking about an earlier gas attack and Hersh's speculation is widely deried. Perhaps the main problem with this theory is why if the ruthless rebels could obtain sarin they used it on their own people in a "false flag operation" and never against Assad forces.

9. A Syrian woman in the room talked about the so-called elections in Syria. She talked about an election she took part in (before 2011) where you could only vote for Assad or no one and how someone intimidating watched how you voted. (By the way there are about 500 adults Syrians living in CT. Though the event was widely publicized they didn't come to listen to Bartlett's version of the truth.)

Bartlett went to great pains to try to refute the statements of the two Syrian women who came to the event (and who had convinced me to come.)

10. A professor on the panel who had helped coordinate the Peace Council trip to Syria, Dr. Bahman Azad, made this startling statement about democracy "No country in the world had democracy during war. Didn't we put 30,000 Japanese in prison during World War II?" [from my notes, perhaps not word for word]. He was defending something that even the Reagan Administration had apologized for.

11. Azad was all excited by member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard's new bill, the "Stop Arming Terrorists" bill,
designed to cut off U.S. support for unnamed fighters in Syria (FSA?, the Kurds?) He said it was crucial we support it.
That Gabbard met with Trump and tried to get a job in his administration was not mentioned. This should really be no surprise.
The Peace Council sees Trump's election as an opportunity (as opposed to the calamity that it is). From their official analysis
"Trump's inconsistent statements offer an opportunity to insist that future President Trump pursue positive positions such as détente
with Russia, ending the war on Syria and suggestions that NATO is outmoded. "

12. It is totally impossible even for this group not to know that Assad Syria had been a dictatorship up through 2011, but they had an answer. Assad, you see, had responded to the actual non-violent protests at the very start by putting through reforms. The reforms included free elections with many parties running and many parties being elected to the parliament. That satisfied the honest opposition, they said, and though they want more reform and are still in the opposition they support Syria (Assad) against the terrorists.

13. The millions of refugees who had fled Syria were not running for Assad or even the warfare, but from economic conditions caused by Western sanctions. (even though many surveys say the opposite)

14. At the end of the meeting I didn't try to dispute facts, but talked about Bartlett's language which I compared to Netanyahu (calling all fighters "terrorists", saying all established human rights groups are anti-Israel,etc.) or Madeleine Albright (claiming it was Saddams' fault that hundreds of thousands died from U.S./U.N. sanctions) and Bull Connors of Alabama in the '60's and his ilk who claimed all the "trouble" was caused by "outside agitators".

15. I did ask one question, why did Bartlett appear on a radio show of the conspiracist Richie-Allen, David Icke group even though Icke plays with anti-Semitism. Icke defends the famous anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as an important document. Bartlett did not try to dispute that. She answered, I have a question for you, "Would you appear on Fox news. It's Islamophobic."